Ancient lake revealed in Upper Egypt

29Nov

An ancient major lake that would have appeared some 250,000 years ago and vanished definitively some 80,000 years ago has been discovered just North of the Egypt-Sudan border, just West of modern Aswan Reservoir, in the region known as Tushka.

Lake Tushka (deep blue) at two different prehistorical sizes

This lake probably played some role, yet to be understood, in the early period of Humankind. It was not the only one of its kind, other large lakes existed in what is now the Sahara, the most famous maybe being Lake Chad, which in the past was at least a thousand times larger than it is now, a true inland sea.

Today there are a few smaller lakes but were caused by human intervention, pumping excess water from Lake Nasser.